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“She said, 'I'm so afraid.' And I said, 'why?,' and she said, 'Because I'm so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.' I asked her why and she said, 'They only let you be this happy if they're preparing to take something from you.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Life #Drs #Said
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“I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing. So what I know about writing, I know from my own instincts, and whatever the narrative voice is in my own head.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Writing #School #College
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“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Inspirational #Life #Hurt
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“You are never alone in Afghanistan. You are always in the company of others, usually family. You don't understand yourself really as an individual, you understand yourself as part of something bigger than yourself. Family is so central to your identity, to how you make sense of your world, it is very dramatic, and therefore an amazing source of storytelling, a source of fiction for me.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Identity #Fiction #World
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“Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Sad #Sorrow #Trials
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“I don't know the nuts and bolts of writing. I studied medicine. I was a pre-med nerd. So everything I learned, I know about writing is very instinctive.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Writing #Nuts #Medicine
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“Marriage can wait, education cannot.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Inspirational #Marriage #School
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“Afghanistan has always been sort of a fractured nation, very tribal, where the countryside and the distant provinces have been run by custom, by tribal law and by tribal leaders rather than edicts from the central government in Kabul.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Running #Government #Law
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“There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Life #Lying #Sin
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“I think novelists, when they write their books, end up having occasionally serving a purpose and playing roles that they never really fully either intended or even understood.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Book #Writing #Thinking
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“And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Honesty #Mean #Thinking
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“The things that have always drawn me to the craft of writing is character, it's story, it's something that becomes like a pebble in my shoe, a voice that I just can't get rid of, and I've got to see it through.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Writing #Character #Shoes
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“A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated...”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Chance #Uneducated
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“I grew up with some kind of storytelling instinct, and when I write, my default setting is to find a story and then to tell it. It's the only way I know how to write.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Writing #Stories #Way
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“War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace." - Baba”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#War #Demand #Baba
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“Throughout the last century there were multiple attempts at giving Afghan women more autonomy, to change marriage laws, to abolish the practice of bride price and child marriage, and to enforce women to be involved in school. Every time, the reaction from the traditionalists was one of contempt and scorn and at times outright rebellion. I think the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has to come from inside, through Afghans themselves, gradually, over time.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Children #School #Thinking
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“J’aurais dû être plus gentille—I should have been more kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Regret #Thinking #Wish
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“No matter where we're born, which countries we're raised in, what cultures we come from, there are some universal experiences we all have as children. We all kind of start the same. We want the love of our parents, companionship, friends, we want to have fun, to play, and we're all hurt the first time we learn that the world is far from perfect place - it's the start of a series of epiphanies and realizations that is what growing up is all about.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Country #Hurt #Children
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“Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Given #Enormous
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“I feel like we [americans] are a unique nation in this world, in that we are able to implement great change in our society over a relatively short period of time. What takes centuries in Europe, we accomplish in a generation.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Unique #Europe #Generations
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“A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Men #Suffering #Doe
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“Without women taking an active role in Afghan society, rebuilding Afghanistan is going to be very difficult.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Roles #Rebuilding #Difficult
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“Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Fiction #Alive #Periods
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“My wife is my in-home editor and reads everything I write.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Home #Writing #Editors
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“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime...”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Life #May #Sometimes
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“People say that eyes are windows to the soul.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Eye #People #Soul
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“President Karzai is an incredibly kind and decent man. I had the pleasure of meeting him, and he genuinely cares for his people. But I think he had too much of a tendency to want to rule by listening to all voices at all times.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Men #Thinking #Voice
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“Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Children #Book #Color
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“But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Thinking #Charm
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“Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.”
-- Khaled Hosseini
#Love You #Suffering #Poor
